As announced a few days ago on the [Going Solo blog](http://going-solo.net), [registration for the Leeds conference on September 12th is now open](http://going-solo.net/2008/07/04/going-solo-leeds-registration-is-open/):

Early Bird (first 25 tickets — hurry up some have already been sold!): £150

Normal: £220

Late Bird (will kick in approx. 10 days before the conference date): £300

On-site (if you really want to play it ‘last minute’): £350

A comment or two:

for the Lausanne event, the first 25 tickets were sold in under a week

there will be advanced seminars (3h workshops) on the Saturday morning — more about them shortly, but know already that if you have already registered for the main conference when they are announced, you will get a special discount on them (they will be open only to conference participants)

Jet2.com is a low-cost company that flies to Leeds-Bradford International airport

Leeds is 2.5h from London by train (book early, and you could pay as little as £22.50 return)

Of course, let me remind you that [Going Solo Lausanne was a nice success](http://going-solo.net/2008/05/17/going-solo-lausanne-was-a-hit/), and that you can now [check out the videos of the talks](http://dailymotion.com/GoingSolo) online.

Going Solo is a one-day event for freelancers and small business owners working in somewhere in the internet industry (designers, consultants, journalists, social media people, developers…) — or even outside of it (we actually think the topics we’ll cover are relevant for all freelancers).

Looking forward to seeing you in Leeds, and thanks for spreading the news around you!

Here we are… the moment everybody (I hope!) was waiting for: [Registration](http://going-solo.net/registration/) for Going Solo is now [open](http://going-solo.net/2008/02/11/registration-open/), with a special discount for everybody during this first week: 100 CHF off the Early Bird price!

You can head straight to the [registration form](https://goingfar.expectnation.com/goingsolo/public/register/order/) if you don’t want to lose a second (which I’m sure you don’t).

Questions? You’ll probably find the answers on the [Going Solo site](http://going-solo.net). If you don’t, leave a comment somewhere and I’ll do my best to answer!

I’ve known for some time that [version 2.3 of WordPress](http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_2.3) would support real tagging. Today, Matt has just announced the [deployment of tagging on WordPress.com](http://wordpress.com/blog/2007/09/22/tags-and-categories/).

From the start, I’ve been a very vocal supporter of the [differentiation between tags and categories](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/02/11/tags-and-categories-are-not-the-same/) — and I really appreciate Matt acknowledging this in his announcement.

When I first met Matt offline for the first time nearly a year ago, [at Blogtalk Reloaded in Vienna](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/72157600218664445/), I jumped on the occasion to pester him about tags and categories. He listened — but I don’t think he was convinced at the time.

A few months later, I was [in San Francisco](http://flickr.com/photos/bunny/sets/72157594465240661/) — and one of the first things Matt told me when we met again was “you know, I finally saw the light about tags and categories”. He told me version 2.3 would have both. I was overjoyed. I’ll never know exactly what role I played in Matt’s “seeing the light”, but I like to think I contributed 🙂

Looking back in time, [Technorati started indexing tags in January 2005](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2005/01/14/technorati-tagified/). They weren’t new for me then (I’d been tagging things on del.icio.us since May 2004 and on Flickr since October of the same year) but clearly, being able to tag posts was a great thing. You know me — my brain can’t sit still — two days later, I was [rambling about some ways to combine tags in searches/sorting](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2005/01/16/thinking-about-tags/). Some of the stuff I talk about in there isn’t possible yet, but I hope it will someday.

Two days after that, I wrote my first WordPress plugin, [Bunny’s Technorati Tags](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2005/01/18/technorati-tags-plugin/) — which became quite popular and which I still use to this day.

I’m really glad to be able to retire this plugin, specially as [Peter Westwood has written an importer for it](http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/archives/2007/09/07/living-on-the-edge/). That means you should have no problems converting your bunny-tags into wp-tags. Thank you very much, Peter.

Bear with me while I dig though my archives: [weighted tags by category](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2005/01/28/plugin-idea-weighted-tags-by-category/) is something I’d forgotten I’d wanted… does anything like that exist now?

My only gripe with the implementation of tags in WordPress, for the moment, is that they will be comma-separated. No! Please! We’ve been typing space-separated tags into Flickr and del.icio.us for three years now. Three years! When I chose space-separation for the tags in my plugin, it was because the existing interfaces for tags did it like that.

Spaces, please. Or at least an option to input them space-separated. Or a simple plugin. Tags separated by spaces, and multi-word tags between quotes.

A little over a month from now, I’ll be giving a talk on corporate blogging to leading communications executives of Swiss companies. I’ve been asked to provide an introduction to my talk, which will be included alongside some biographical information in the invitation to the event. Here’s my draft, based on examples of previous invitations I was given:

> Blogs are way more than teenage diaries, and it is now common knowledge that they can be a precious tool in corporate environments. Many companies today are interested in embracing social media, and some take the plunge — unfortunately, not always with the desired results.

> Blogging is not a magical solution. Though it requires little technical skill to exertblog (akin to sending an e-mail), it comes bundled with the culture of openness and real human dialogue described at the beginning of the decade in The Cluetrain Manifesto, which can be at odds with existing corporate communication practice.

> When a corporation starts blogging, whether behind the firewall or on the internet, it changes. Not all corporations are ready for that. Not all corporations can accommodate those sometimes unpredictable changes.

> Though one could just start blogging blindly, it is wiser in a corporate setting to identify some particular needs or problems which can be addressed with social media. Though social media is by nature error-tolerant, it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance of learning the “blogging culture”, or the time required to keep a blog alive.

> Stephanie Booth will share her insights on how blogs can find a place inside corporate culture, and how to go around introducing them in such a setting. The focus will be on blogging culture and practices, illustrated by real-world examples taken directly from the blogosphere.

I’ve been struggling with it for the last two days, and I’d appreciate your feedback in the comments (both on the language and the content).

I’ve dropped hints with a few people that there were exciting things to come within coComment. There is still much we cannot say, but here’s a fist tidbit (and not the least): we’re hiring.

We are looking for an individual with skills in product design, familiar with the blogging/commenting space from both a technical and user community perspective. Fluent in English and at least one other European language.

Your remit will be to work closely with the Marketing and Technology teams to formulate and lead the development of CoComment.

You will need to be flexbile, fast thinking, passionate about the blogging/commenting space and with the ability to take creative thought and turn it into deliverable product.

In return, CoComment offers a creative, supportive and fast-moving environment, the opportunity to join a rapidly growing company and equity incentives.

As a personal note, I’d like to add that there are chances I’ll be reporting to the Chief Architect. It’s of course not yet 100% certain as there are many unknowns, but here I am, probably posting the ad for my future boss’s position…